Course summary
Alternative story forms, ASFs, ALTs, storytelling devices — they go by different names and include everything but stories written in the traditional text-plus-headline format. This course will introduce you to the world of alternative story forms and show you how to add them to your writing, editing or designing repertoire.
“Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” will teach you how to break down information by theme and organize stories to make them snappy and more useful to time-crunched readers. With a focus on the importance of newsroom collaboration, this course showcases a range of supplemental and standalone forms, demonstrates what forms work best with what story ideas and provides techniques for editing alternative forms for factual errors and other problematic copy.
Since readers seem to have less and less time to read, you need to help them get the information they need. You’ll learn how to select, write, edit and present a variety of alternative forms through various interactive games and activities.
What will I learn
- Break down information by theme
- Organize stories to make them snappy and more useful to time-crunched readers
- Focus on the importance of newsroom collaboration
- Understand the range of supplemental and standalone forms and the differences between them
- Identify which forms work best with which story ideas
Who should take this course
This course is for writers, reporters, editors and designers who are looking for new ways to make information more useful to readers who are pressed for time.
About self-directed courses
In a self-directed course, you can start and stop whenever you like, progressing entirely at your own pace and going back as many times as you want to review the material.
Questions?
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at info@newsu.org.
Instructor
Andy Bechtel
Andy Bechtel teaches editing and writing at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has about a dozen years of experience as a copy editor at North Carolina newspapers.
Sponsor
The Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote community engagement and lead to transformational change.
This $30 course is free thanks to the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
